Amalgamate
by Reinstated
Summary: Somewhere, fragile friends and Alice dance on sturdy card castles in the sky, hiding a conquered valley of ruin and falsification and raw madness. SPOILERS.


**WARNINGS:**

-**SPOILERS FOR _MADNESS RETURNS_**

**-Some facts have been taken from the downloadable storybook and Wilson's case files**

**-My own thoughts on what happens after the ending**

**-Confusing timeline; anachronological orders**

**And, well, my style that may or may not be well received. Thank you for clicking on this little story, anyway. Please enjoy.**

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><p><strong>Amalgamate<strong>

They laugh and they tease and they think her stupid, but she can hear them.

And it's hurting and she wants them to stop and to go away but they don't.

* * *

><p>When she lands, everything is beautiful. There are no reflections of damage and chaos here. Everything is peaceful and it reminds her of her old childhood - the childhood before the fire: full of innocence and childish joy and contentedness.<p>

She greets the Vale like an old friend.

It's her only link back to a time long gone.

* * *

><p>Nurse D is talking about making holes in her head so the troubles have more space, more air to breathe. She doesn't like the idea very much, but maybe that's what she needs.<p>

Oxygen. Air. Sweet air, unlike the stale and metallic tang this room holds.

The twins are laughing again. So fat, so full of themselves, their mouths contorted into mad grins, their stomachs almost popping out tiny little buttons, white shirts stained with cruelty and blood.

The metal contraption is cold against her bare head. There's a drill that's slowly descending into her skull. She wants to scream but she can't. She can't speak now. She can't move. Her arms are bound together in her straightjacket and so she only looks ahead, her eyes wide and frantic, her tears already dried up and used, useless for her now.

But everything is white and the blood is ugly, even with one's morbid fascination with this beauty.

Except suddenly it's all painful and she can't handle it.

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><p>The Cheshire Cat appears, grin first, like always. His tail moves back and forth, almost provoking her - but she still knows he's a friend; he's always just been like that and she's only on edge.<p>

"Don't bully me, blasted Cat." She says with a huff. Indignant as always. Sharp words on a sharp, corroded tongue. "I'm very much on edge."

He purrs in that low tone. The grin never leaves his face and his teeth are jagged but comforting.

"Perfect. When you're not on edge, you're taking up too much space."

She feels like hitting him, but he disappears. The grin leaves last - always last - and what can she do to a grin? Still, she is grateful for that grin. It comforts her and she wants to sit with him again. She thinks about when he was just an ordinary tabby cat with less jibes and more harmless quips.

He doesn't return for a while. She enjoys her silence and her peace, but when the air grows thick and polluted and monstrous globs appear for her to slay - after reclaiming her blade from that bloody mess of the Jabberwock's skeleton (she has to stop daydreaming that everything's over, because it isn't; it's only the beginning) - she feels the familiar itch in her throat and her fingers twitch.

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><p>Disgusting slimy creatures, they all are.<p>

The twins are at it again. Leeches curdle in their fingers, spraying out noiseless hisses and curling up from the light and the exposure. They disgust her but she cannot move away.

"Me! I'll put them on her!"

"No! Me! Me!"

They're arguing.

How gruesome.

"...But these leeches need the work!"

Their black fat bodies inch closer and she wants to scream, she wants to run, she wants to cry out her dried up tears. But she cannot move and they don't understand that. The little creatures flop onto her arms and her body and they suck her blood until she feels faint.

They're crawling so slowly and each disgusting leech is enough to send chills and nightmares up her spine and into her brain. They twist into formless bodies of goo with doll faces and mechanical parts.

Her breath hitches in her throat.

"Did she say something?"

The two orderlies glance at each other, but she is quiet again, silent in her suffering. Her eyes are only wide and haunting, empty to them but actually still there, somehow, somewhere.

"No. Must have been your imagination."

_I - I'm here. I'm not edible._

But, no.

She's not here.

She's not there.

She's gone back, hiding from her dreadful reality, hiding back into her malformed Wonderland, about to face more dreadful creatures.

Neither place is well, now.

Her reality. Her safehaven.

Both, broken.

Her soul screams and her lips do not twitch in the slightest.

* * *

><p>The Hatter is broken up into pieces. They strike up a deal and she realizes that now he's almost harmless.<p>

(Now, she's the one. She's the deadly one.)

He proves useless, choosing his dead friends over her as she drowns in imaginary tea but very real seawater.

"I'm drowning in tea... and in ignorance!" she exclaims.

Why didn't she kill him off, anyway?

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><p>The ceiling never changes. It's always yellow, always flaking. The doctor comes and goes. He claps bricks to her ears sometimes or places a burning flame near her eye. Other times, he tries to speak to her.<p>

She never responds.

Because she's not there. She's off, fighting card guards and finding potion ingredients and slaying giant insects and going through labyrinths and watching children, poor children, walk around with painful contraptions around their bodies, twisting their fragile beings into monstrous forms with cold metal.

She doesn't like to pity them, because if she does she's afraid of what will happen.

She's afraid that she'll break down and try to save them, even if there's nothing she can do for them now.

She's afraid that she'll see herself in them.

She's afraid that she'll end up like them.

She's afraid of herself and her madness.

And yet...

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><p>The electric shocks jolt her spine and her body twists forward. Her arms are strapped onto armrests and her eyes are covered in short unruly bangs. The metal headband wraps around her forehead and her body twitches as more surges of electricity shock her tired body.<p>

The doctor frowns and jots down his notes.

Her nerves are searing.

Her eyes are unseeing.

Her skin is tingling until she can't feel anything but pain.

But her mind is alive, albeit misplaced.

* * *

><p>...She's afraid of facing her fears. Afraid of living outside Rutledge, the real real world.<p>

Because there is nothing left out there. This Rutledge and this shattered Wonderland, they're the only ones left.

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><p>"Forget it, Alice. Forget it. <em>Forget it<em>."

"Where would she be without me? Out on the streets, selling her backside!"

"...Hopeless case."

"There is no method in this madness!"

"Not all find the way. Some don't even want to."

"I - I'm not mad." She says with a stutter. "I'm fine. I didn't kill my family. I'm innocent, I mean - not guilty!"

Fleshy tendrils reach out, their color blinding her. Terror rings out and she is frozen with this fear. She raises her hands to her mouth and stares at them in horror. "What are you doing?"

She looks up and the last thing she sees are rows and rows of sharp teeth and a large, horrifying mouth.

Perhaps...

...That scream she hears, is it an echo of her own?

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><p>And then when she's realized the truth and the pieces of her memories have been restitched together, she feels confident, but still afraid.<p>

The fear will never leave now. She just has to conquer them.

"You have used and abused me, but you will not destroy me!"

He laughs. His voice echoes with a chorus of a million other facades. Deceit. Frauds. Lies. Trickery. Anger. Envy. Selfishness. Arrogance. Power.

Fragile children fall into the furnace of the train, fuel for this plan. She's one of them, but she breaks free. She will break free, and she will rise from the ashes. She won't give up. It's not too late, right?

Right?

_"The destruction of Wonderland is the destruction of me?"_

_"And vice-versa!"_

He laughs again, but this is a less illusionary laugh from one real point of view. He's there, looking smart in his waistcoat and that damned ticking pocketwatch. There's a key that hangs from it and she feels the need to snatch it away. It's not his, and he's still kept it all these years.

Who would they believe? A raving lunatic who's been locked in Rutledge for ten years? The respectable man of high society?

"Nobody would believe you, Alice. I scarcely believe it myself."

She clenches her hand into a fist and narrows her eyes. Now or never, they say. She's had the chance so many times, and so many times has she lost it.

She will not lose to him.

She will not-

"Now, go. Your replacement will arrive soon."

Yes, she scarcely believes it herself.

* * *

><p>The authorities will arrive soon.<p>

The rusted metal digs deep into her hand.

Her footsteps are loud against the empty cobblestones.

The world beyond - Londerland - awaits.

She smiles. The blood stains will never leave her apron, nor her hands, but she can live with that. The Cheshire Cat's smooth purr resonates through and she relishes this new and wonderful world. There are no more broken memories. There are no more cages to gnaw at her insides and turn her head inside out.

"Our Wonderland, though broken, is safe in memory... for now."

She closes her eyes and hears the running of feet and the screaming of a dozen men. They restrain her and she doesn't fight back. She will know what the policemen will say.

"Alice isn't so innocent now."

But she is happy, because for once the Queen is leaving Wonderland at peace, for once the Cheshire Cat sits with her silently, his grin never leaving and his quips not as painful, for once the White Rabbit isn't running too far away, for once the Hatter is polite and kind in his time checks and in his pouring of tea, and for once the invisible blood is pretty on her imaginary apron.

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><p>She can't live in disillusion.<p>

But this world - it is better for her.

* * *

><p>Somewhere, fragile friends and Alice dance on sturdy card castles in the sky, hiding a conquered valley of ruin and falsification and raw madness.<p>

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><p><strong>Thank you for reading this far.<strong>

**Please try to send a review to show your thoughts on it. I know it's confusing, and you can read the rant below (enclosed in the [ and ] symbols), but I don't even know if it will help.**

**And thank you for your time.**

**[So, this was something quite random, and my thoughts are everywhere. It's not chronological. Certainly not. I'm not sure if you'll get confused, but it made sense in my head, and I don't think I need to explain it here unless you really ask for one.**

**I'm the type of person who prefers that people take these things and interpret it themselves. This little ficlet was basically condensing Alice's past at the asylum (facts are taken from _Madness Returns_ and the downloadable storybook), the first game, _Madness Returns _and its inevitable ending and a bit of what I thought of what would happen after Bumby's death.**

**It might be pathetic if you look at it in a certain angle - more than one certain angle - but I'm okay with posting it here. My thoughts of what happens after killing Bumby are this: Alice is caught by the police and locked up in jail, but she is happy in her madness and it doesn't bother her so.**

**It's a dark ending if you think about it. She'll rot in jail with nothing but a death sentence to look forward to, but at least she has her friends in Wonderland. I'm not even adding things about his victims here. That would complicate things.**

**If you've read this far, I'm glad you've had the patience to, although this is probably just a waste of time. Thank you very much for reading, though. Please leave a review to tell me what you think.**

**It'll probably be deleted once I realize that I was half-asleep when I made this, though. Or something.]**


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